


Through Sharpened Teeth

by Hecatetheviolet



Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Alien Cultural Differences, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Background Poly, Breaking Up & Making Up, Character Study, Earn Your Happy Ending, Enemies to Lovers, Established Relationship, F/M, Father-Daughter Relationship, Getting Back Together, Human/Monster Romance, Hurt/Comfort, Identity Reveal, It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better, Lovers To Enemies, Moral Ambiguity, Multi, Non-Linear Narrative, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Redemption, Relationship Issues, Relationship Negotiation, Secret Identity, Self-Discovery, Slow Burn, Trans Male Character, Valerie centric, dannymay2020, ghost hunger, trans danny and sam, vague au where ghosts are more monsterous
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-11
Updated: 2020-06-12
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:02:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 19,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24136303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hecatetheviolet/pseuds/Hecatetheviolet
Summary: It feels so much like Valerie's idea of Danny has been ruined. Stolen from her and replaced with something fundamentally wrong. Not in the way of a lie, but with the stark light of a harsh truth. A curtain pulled away to reveal something rotten.A ghost. Danny is aghost.A ghost hunter and a ghost go on a date. They're meeting for the first time. They've been together for six months. Which matters more?
Relationships: Danny Fenton/Sam Manson/Tucker Foley/Valerie Gray, Danny Fenton/Tucker Foley/Sam Manson, Danny Fenton/Valerie Gray, Valerie Gray & Damon Gray, Valerie Gray & Vlad Masters
Comments: 70
Kudos: 212
Collections: Godly Recs, The Witch's Woods





	1. prelude

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dannymay; Doctor
> 
> Monster, Dodie

The monumental effort it takes to keep his leg from vibrating the couch though the floor is not something that Danny is capable of at the moment, but he does put a little more effort into it when the downstairs neighbors bang on the ceiling for the third time. It’s just the broom this time, not accompanied by more yelling like when he’d been pacing earlier. Guess they’re starting to understand that this is the best they’re going to get tonight.

He checks his phone for the hundredth time, but nothing has changed. He messages a bunch of punctuation at the group with Sam and Tucker then drops it back into his pocket. Refocuses on not angering Val’s neighbors more than he already has. But he’s stressed down to his soul, at this point. It’s hard to sit here and just wait.

But he has to. If he wants Val to trust him, then it has to be this way.

He doesn’t know how Sam and Tucker ever dealt with this.

The elevator in the hallway dings for the third time that night and Danny goes still, waiting. It's Valerie.

Footsteps echo in a slow, mincing gait as they draw closer to the door. Something thuds quietly in the hall, and an eternity later, a key scrapes at the lock. It takes a few tries to get it in, then the door swings open with a jerk. Val slams it shut as she slumps into the room. Danny can see the exact second she recognizes that the lights are on, and that she’s not alone.

He moves just enough to dodge her shot, staying still on the couch as she stares wild eyed and shaking with adrenalin. Hands already up in a placing gesture, he waits for her to relax or maybe take better aim. The ectoplasmic burn steams on the fake leather beside his cheek. Smells disgusting.

“Get out.” She whispers like she’ll scream otherwise.

“Not while you’re hurt,” Danny starts, standing slowly.

“I told you -” Her voice starts to rise, but then she sways in place, leaning her shoulder into the door heavily. Her suit finally deactivates, leaving her without that support. Her glare doesn’t falter for a second.

“I know,” Danny says carefully, edging a bit closer. “But please just let me help you.”

“I don’t need your help, just, just go home, Danny.”

“Not while you’re bleeding out, Val. Just let me help you. Please.”

She mumbles something, but is too busy slumping forward to make it into words. Danny catches her when she falls.

At least he’s strong enough that lifting her is easy; dragging her would have only spread the bloodstains further into the apartment. As it is, there’s a spray on the floor and smears on the door and wall she leaned on. He just hopes there’s none in the public hallway. Her suit stemmed most of it, but a good amount drips from her arm now that the temporary bandage is gone.

Danny sets her on her floor where he’s already laid out a towel and the first aid kit. Sam’s usually the one who deals with medical things when he can’t heal fast enough, or needs a little help, or one of the human members of the trio gets injured. Tucker’s too squeamish for everything but PT and the occasional supportive hand holding while Sam does their thing. But Danny’s not one to leave things wholly to other people, so whatever Sam learned, he learned. He’d taught them the basics, since his parents had taught him first.

That’s not even close to the only reason he’s here right now, but it’s what will help smooth this over when Val wakes up.

The three of them have a standing it’s-ok-to-strip-me-for-medical-purposes agreement, but he doesn’t have that with Val, so he does his best to leave her clothes alone and just rolls up her sleeve before it stains when he finds nothing but a few bruises on her back and right leg. They’re already dark, and probably going to be painful for a while, but aren’t in areas he’s immediately concerned about.

It’s a thankfully shallow cut, just long and at a bad angle to keep pressure on when moving. That’s all. It’s an easy clean and disinfect and wrap job. Doesn’t even need stitches.

He’s nearly done putting the kit away when he senses Damon Gray enter the building. He wasn’t supposed to be home until nearly 6 AM, but of course he would call off if he saw anything about Red Huntress on the news. Danny lets out a breath and considers what to do, tracking the rise of his signature in the elevator. Val won’t be waking up for a while yet, so he won’t have to awkwardly duck out of a father-daughter argument, at least.

The elevator dings in his peripheral as he finishes winding the unused bandages into a perfect coil. He clips the end to the roll and waits for whatever happens next.

The front door opens. Not even a second later, Mr. Gray is running for Val’s room and slams her door open.

…Danny forgot about the blood.

Mr. Gray’s eyes are exactly like Val’s - dark and wild and expressive, but with all the fear and none of the rage right now. There’s a long silent moment where only the wind howls outside the window. Danny sets the roll back in the kit and snaps it closed.

“She’s okay,” He offers quietly.

Mr. Gray slumps against the door, clutching the knob in his shaking hand, and lets out a huge sigh.

“Sorry, I haven’t been able to clean up yet. I can -”

“Son,” Says Mr. Gray, and he’s just about the only man Danny will allow to call him that, “You’ve done enough. I’ll… I’ll get it.”

“Okay,” Danny says carefully, “But I’m not the one who just got off a twelve hour shift. I don’t mind.”

Mr. Gray looks a thousand years old as he takes off his glasses and rubs his eyes. His hair is well into graying and he looks like there’s about a hundred pounds on his shoulders.

“Twelve hours of sitting at a desk, staring at a screen. Trust me, I’d love to have a bit of exercise right now.”

Danny just nods and stands to slide the kit under Val’s bed. If she’s mad about it being there, she can move it later.

He gets out of the way of Mr. Grey lifting Val to set her on her bed. The older man grunts, but succeeds in moving her. Maybe Danny should have offered to help? He has super strength, his dad is 7’2”, his mom is a champion black belt, and Jazz does Crossfit for fun. He has literally no idea what the average human should be able to lift. But whatever that number is, it’s not about to get in the way of Mr. Grey supporting his daughter.

He scoops the slightly stained towel off the floor and folds it nervously, stepping out into the main room. Gives Mr. Grey some privacy to sit with Val and stroke her hair while she sleeps. Danny drops the towel in the empty dirty laundry bin beside the clean one he’s already panic folded while waiting for Val. The Greys might be allergic to pity, but they also see each other seldom enough that anything small Danny can do for them gets lost in the shuffle of a lack of reliable chore schedules. Sue him for his incessant need to be helpful and also a decent boyfriend in the only way he kind of can.

Hopefully, that will change after this.

Mr. Grey shuts the door to Val’s room quietly. He sighs with the grace of an overworked father who is absolutely going to internally combust as soon as the front door closes. Danny winces and opens his mouth to offer to clean again, but Mr. Grey just looks at him.

“When did she tell you?”

Oh. Did not think that one through.

“She…didn’t. I figured it out after a while. Um. She’s kind of mad at me right now, since she didn’t know I knew until tonight.” Danny confesses, rubbing the back of his neck habitually. Hopefully it will all work out. He can be an optimist when it suits him.

Mr. Grey just nods.

“Do you need a ride home?” He asks tiredly.

Danny shakes his head. “It’s fine, thank you. Is it okay if I come check on Val tomorrow?”

“That’s fine. I’m gonna try and keep her home from school, make her rest a bit.”

“Good luck with that, sir.” Danny says honestly, and they both spend a second looking at the closed bedroom door. They both know, for different reasons, that Val would rather climb out the window and jog to school with injuries than ruin her record any more than her absences already have. Danny’ll copy Tucker’s notes for him for her again anyway. If she turns up to school he’ll do what he can to gently bully her home. It won’t work.

“Danny…” Says Mr. Grey, then shakes his head slowly. “Go on home, son. Thanks for taking care of Valerie.”

In the hallway, Danny freezes the small spots of blood solid and eases them out of the carpet.


	2. seed of doubt

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dannymay; Reflection

It’s 6 AM. Dark, but soft about it, and just quiet enough to make the morning commute outside Valerie’s window sound distant and pleasant. She used to think she’d never get used to the noise.

The floor chills her feet and creaks lightly under her on her way to the bathroom. Her left hip is stiff and sore something fierce still, but the solid night of rest has helped a bit. She pauses in the little space between her room and the main room to stretch it out further, since her room is too small and cluttered for complete range of movement. Too many prototypes, she really ought to clean up in there. Not like she’d been expecting company this week.

She’d never actually planned for Danny to ever see any of that.

The empty couch gives her pause. The thin blanket is there, rustled like it was just used, but no Danny. If he got to her own bathroom before her she’s gonna be pissed. But when she glances over, the bathroom door is ajar, no light streaming out, no loudly rattling fan. The kitchen is empty, dark, no windows on that side of the apartment.

A cool breeze flutters the curtains over the porch door; it’s half open, like she always leaves it in the summer since the AC is shit here. Danny doesn’t really have any reason to be out there that Val can think of. Maybe he’s nerding out about the last morning appearance of some star or staring at the moon again. He does that. It’s cute.

But when she enters the bathroom, something just barely tickles her eardrums and she freezes. The little window has never shut properly, and the sound is too close to be anywhere but the porch beside the bathroom or the upstairs neighbors. Val steps into the bathtub and eases the pillow sheet tacked to the frame just enough for her to peek out.

Danny leans against the far railing like she’s always told him not to because it wobbles. Fucker. He’s not looking at the sky. It’s too quiet to hear, but he’s clearly speaking, even though his hands are folded in front of him, no phone in sight. It could be a speaker call or something, but Val knows damn well that neither Tucker or Sam like to be conscious before noon, and the other voice she can hear now doesn’t sound like anyone she can place.

She lifts the curtain just a bit more, squishes her cheek to the frosty glass to look through the crack. She can spy on her stupid boyfriend. It’s nothing he won’t tell her about later, if it matters. But she just has such a strange feeling. On edge. Her suit is a low buzz, nearly a hum, in the corner of her mind, like the too-still morning is muffling it somehow.

It has her clenching her teeth hard enough to bother her jaw and angling her head a bit more to see -

On the opposite corner of the railing is Skulker.

Her heart freezes in her chest so fast it hurts.

The rising sun glints off his metal suit, filters through the flames of his hair. Lights up Danny, leaning so calmly not three feet away.

Skulker speaks again, his voice a low grating static, and Danny answers. They’re too far, too quiet, for Valerie to hear the words.

Skulker reaches back and unequips a gun from his shoulder. Her gun. He passes it to Danny - muzzle down, fingers away from the trigger, hold steady - and Danny takes it. Her gun. He takes her gun from Skulker and he holds her gun and he pops out the charger cartridge like he knows how to do that, and then he removes the tank of experimental ecto-fluid like he knew it was there. It looks so small in his hands, filling them with pink light. A strange star on her porch.

Danny gives the empty gun back to Skulker. The ghost stands on the railing, not so much as making it sway, and then takes off with a dull roar of his jets. It’s not until he gets a good ten feet away that her suit alarms her to the proximity. It’s so sudden she can’t help but jump. Slips in the tub, catches herself on the towel railing.

Runs back out into the main room, hooks herself around the edge to the porch and -

It’s empty.

Valerie steps out further, guards her eyes against the sunrise and just - stands there.

“Val?”

She whips around, smacks the curtain out of the way and stares wildly at Danny, on her couch, under the blue blanket, blinking at her with very messy hair. Her hands clench on nothing and she forces herself to breathe through her mouth to unlatch her jaw.

What the fuck was that? Some kind of nightmare? Did she seriously sleepwalk out to the shitty dangerous porch at ass o clock in the morning?

A door closes behind her. Her frozen deliberation gave Danny the opportunity to sneak into the bathroom first. Fucker.

Valerie is - never really calm, some days. There’s always been a bitter little fire in her heart, so this is. Not good. Not great. This morning is already off kilter in the worst way and she’s going to be dealing with it all day, she can just tell. The stress of it settles behind her eyes, in her teeth, in the invisible lines of her suit, running like phantom wires through her aching muscles.

It only takes a few seconds for her to give in. Danny’s bag is on the other side of the couch, and it takes three quick stomps to reach it. It’s the same space bag he’s had since Freshman year, when it looked hilariously huge on his tiny frame. Now it’s beat half to death and missing more than a few teeth, hair ties wrapped through the empty zipper pulls barely keeping it usable.

There is zero hesitation in Valerie’s hands as she works it open. It’ll be quick, just a peek inside while Danny’s occupied, a quick look at the glowing pink fuel tank settled beside his single class notebook and a bunch of scrunched up tests, that’s all. That’s all.

It isn’t there.

His bag is a mess of tests and single notebook and no pencils and tons of food wrappers, as usual. Nothing incriminating. A single blaster in the front pocket, courtesy of his parents. Might as well be a thing of mace. Nothing there.

It isn’t there.

Valerie isn’t quite there either as she closes the bag and sets it back behind the couch. Then she’s in her room, but still not quite there for the ride. She’s never felt so unsettled in her life.

She goes back to bed.


	3. the devil you know

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dannymay; Corruption

The dream or the nightmare or the sleepwalking incident or whatever it was sticks to her like sweat. It clings to her hair, crawls down her spine, gathers in her socks.

Suddenly, every little thing about Danny sets her back on edge. He’ll laugh and his teeth are just a little too perfect, a little too sharp; or he’ll have something in his hand that he didn’t when she looked just a second ago and the abrupt change is uncanny; or he’ll be staring out at something through the window with this look on his face she’s always thought was introspection but now it’s something else and - and just like that, Valerie is back on the porch. Half blinded by the sun and scared of the stupid shitty railing the maintenance man won’t fix. The sharp ledge of it looms in her mind, turns all Danny’s soft edges into crumbling concrete and uncertain stability.

God, it’s a shitty feeling.

It’s happening now.

He’s doing that thing he does when they walk around or sit somewhere quietly. People watching. Chin propped up on hand, head tilted, expression - well. Val used to think it was sweet, how bright and honest his eyes looked, how genuinely happy he seemed to just observe all the life around him. That little hint of something like pride in how absurd Amity Park is and how interesting it can be to just silently watch it pass by. The same way he looked at the stars. The way he looked at Sam and Tucker. At her. She wants to go back to that. She wants that innocent enjoyment back.

But all she can see now is something she doesn’t have a word for yet, but it sets her on that edge, makes her hyperaware of him. Uncomfortable. Like he’s a cold spot in the room, drawing her sense of danger like a magnet.

The laughter in his eyes looks mocking now. The way he looks at Tucker sitting beside him should be the same as yesterday, but now it feels tainted. Unclean. It doesn’t look like lovestruck goopiness anymore, it looks -

_Proprietary._

That’s the fucking word.

Danny looks like a fucked up, overpowered monster watching over its pathetic human pets with fondness. With something like knowing how small Tucker is in comparison to him glinting in his eyes. Like he’s one more Tucker Pun away from actually petting him and complimenting him on being a cute little human worthy of his attention.

Val actually feels a little sick thinking about it. But it’s there now. The idea. The doubt.

It feels so much like her idea of Danny has been ruined. Stolen from her and replaced with something fundamentally wrong. Not in the way of a lie, but with the stark light of a harsh truth. A curtain pulled away to reveal something rotten.

Her suit has never alerted her to Danny being anything other than human, but he’d confessed it himself, hadn’t he? That he’s severely contaminated. Ectoplasm sits like water in his hands.

He’s always made those odd little comments about not all ghosts being bad, hasn’t he?

This makes no sense. Val has - he has a heartbeat, she’s heard it in his chest, felt it on his wrist. But her fingers always seemed to soak up a heavy, clinging chill from his skin, even while that beat ran steady under them. Dead cold.

A side effect.

Nothing about him has changed. Everything is the same as it ever was - him and Tucker on the same side of the booth, waiting for Sam or going solo Val can never tell; both laughing quietly together about something, playing on their phones, leaning into each others shoulders, making overdramatic gestures.

But are Danny’s movements too fast? Too slow? Just a bit disjointed in her vision and somehow both at once? Is the way he looks at Tucker with his eyes crinkled from smiling loving or possessive?

Valerie just can’t tell anymore.

She wishes she had never seen it.


	4. match set

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dannymay; regret

**He/himbo 6:29pm**

Idk if u have any interest but the perseids are coming up soon and

Sams w her fam this week and tucks gonna b out at his g uncle’s funeral

Would u like to make a solo date out of it?

**Valerie bc I said so gray 9:00pm**

Let me think about it

Valerie should not have to think about it. Her boyfriend is offering to take her on a date to the fields well out of town, alone, to watch the stars together, alone, because he loves stars and space and shit and this is some important meteor event that only occurs once every year and he wants to share it with her. Alone.

There should be nothing for her to think about. She should be thinking about Swift Turtle the meteor parent and Perseus the hero and radiance in the sky and the degree of the moon. Every word Danny’s spoken to her about it she’s committed to memory. Examined every detail, every shift in tone, every gesture, searched hard for hidden meanings in the excited flow of his sentences. Stared at the tell tale hint of green light in the back of his eyes when he got too excited to reign it in. The way he got lost in his words, and easily forgot to breathe when Valerie showered him with quick questions. There might have been a time or two where he forgot to open his mouth to speak but his voice carried as clear as ever. But that could have been her fear. Could have been her doubt.

Could have been the truth.

The whole time, in the back of her head, deep in the pupil of her eyes, her alarms had been silent.

There should be nothing for her to hesitate with, in this. She should be firm in her decisions. Firm in her beliefs. Always has been. Always will be. She knows what she should do. Knows what she wants to do.

**Valerie bc I said so gray 12:18AM**

Yes

She hopes she won’t regret this.


	5. the date, side a

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dannymay; diner

Valerie is half an hour late to their date when his ghost sense goes off.

This is the fifth time she’s been late like this, might become the third time she’s stood him up. Danny can’t hold it against her. It’s not like he doesn’t know what she’s doing, when she isn’t with him.

Technus rockets over the rooftops across the street, shrieking like a cat as he dodges bright pink blasts too close for comfort. Honestly, his technique is horrible. For someone so smart, he should have figured out that a straight line is not the best way to escape a chase by now. Red Huntress slides smoothly in his wake, a bright blur in the approaching twilight. Technus takes a shot to the back and stutters in the air, glitches, loses altitude. Red Huntress closes in.

Danny stretches his legs out in the booth and sets his phone beside the mostly melted and half gone milkshake, absently debating whether he should intervene or not. Technus does have a decently powerful upgrade in effect and seems to be more overwhelmed than in pain. Danny can let this one go.

The waitress is kneeling on the booth seat of the next table over, hand on the window, recording the fight on her phone. Notifications for #RedHuntressTooFast and #GlitchGhost light up his phone. The two other patrons are talking excitedly, crowding the windows. Watching.

Danny rests his cheek on the cool vinyl of the booth seat and joins them. Not like he could look away. Val moves fast - liquid and easy, flying comfortable as any ghost. He can just barely sense her from here; her suit’s been getting stronger. Or maybe she is. His breaths come in small puffs of frost, a hitch in his chest, in his lungs, hiccuping out a warning as the fight stays nearby. But his core is still. There’s no pull to launch himself out the diner window and chase the uninvited ghost out of his territory. He’s perfectly content to let Val at it.

That’s still new. They’ve only been dating for about three months, but somewhere around the fifth or so week, Danny had just started feeling differently about her as a ghost. Before, he’d been afraid of her, afraid for her. As a hunter, as a human. Val is Amity, and what is Amity is his. And then she had become his in a deeper way. Protecting her had risen to the level of protecting Sam and Tucker and Jazz. And then she had just - kept getting stronger.

It gave his ghost half some kind of feelings. Intense feelings. Feelings that made him freeze up and melt and roll over and get himself shot in the ass when they happened upon each other in the skies. It was sort of a problem, but his ghost brain had decided to become utterly useless whenever he was within fifteen of Val, so. Not much help there.

Just like now, when watching Val beat the shit out of Technus with her bare hands because she’s stressed about her final science test grade is nothing short of fulfilling. His core purrs.

Technus gets caught in a headlock and makes eye contact with Danny through the window. He reaches for the milkshake and takes a sip, slowly. Technus finally goes intangible and streaks away. Val hangs in the sky for a moment, and Danny can’t take his eyes off her. Her suit glows in the sunset, bright and warm red and alive. She stands over Amity and it’s wonderful. He’s pretty sure he must be vibrating the seat, but he can’t stop. His heart’s all full up and his core is overcompensating for the overflow.

That’s weird, right? When your girlfriend being late for a date because she’s busy fighting people makes you happy?

It’s probably just his own messed up fight or flight ghost instincts. And also the ghost fighting related trauma that Jazz likes to inform him he has. It’s not like she’s wrong, so.

Red Huntress takes a dive into the alley behind the bookstore Sam likes. Val comes rushing out a few seconds later, pausing only to glance up and down the street. Just before the door to the restaurant, she forces herself to slow to a stop, taking a deep breath and patting at her helmet frazzled hair for a few seconds, her golden bangles flashing in the sun. The little chime on the door echoes and she makes a face, a guilty little wince, as she takes in the mostly empty diner, near to closing on a Tuesday. He waves at her.

“I am so, so sorry,” She gasps as she tosses her purse into the booth, still a bit out of breath from defending Amity on her own, from the rush of flying. She smells like smoke and engine oil and ectoplasm and human and sunlight. And Technus, which upsets him just a little.

“Hey,” Danny offers, trying to tamp down the _everything_ his core is currently doing so he can talk without sounding like a problem.

It must not work as well as he hoped it would, because Val gives him a look of complete confusion that melts into a fierce blush and a pout.

“What?” She asks, looking away quickly, giving a nervous little laugh.

“Saved you some,” Danny pushes the rest of the milkshake across the table, leans his elbows there.

“Thanks,” Val whispers, smiling back ruefully.

It’s a pretty good date.


	6. red light

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dannymay; Breathe

Valerie is ready by the time she sees Danny. He’s sticking half out of Jazz’s little car, borrowed for the day because nobody wanted him behind the wheel of the GAV. He’s worse than his dad. It’s also illegal beyond city limits, Val’s pretty sure.

“Oh, hey. I’ve got us a picnic, and Jazz has a letter for you. I think it’s just a birthday card. Are you ready to go?” And he sounds so normal. Valerie’s nervous system is a gun. Wired. Her vision reddens as she examines him closely under her suit’s power. Deep bags under his eyes, as usual. Well hidden by dark sunglasses, very new and unscratched. Unusual. One of Sam’s black band hoodies, way too hot for the weather. Also usual. Does something about his face seem off, or is that her paranoia getting to her? The glasses are throwing her off. Her suit gives her nothing.

“Sure,” She says pleasantly, handing him her bag to tuck into the trunk. “How about I drive?”

Danny pulls out of the trunk and looks down at her in the afternoon sun. He’s never worn sunglasses. But then again, it's bright out and Val has a pair in her purse. It could be nothing. Right?

Val channels her sweetest look, just for him.

“Are you sure?” He asks, all concern. It’s so real. “You just got off work, didn’t you? I know I’m not the best driver, but you can at least relax in the passenger seat.”

“Nah,” Says Val. “It’s been so long since I drove, and I don’t want to make you be the driver both ways. Since it’ll be dark when we get back, I’d rather have you do that part.” That’s logical. Normal. Reasonable.

“Well, alright.” He concedes. Passes her the keys. Grins, all boyish charm, when he says, “Don’t scratch Jazz’s precious paint.”

Was that too easy? Danny folds into the passenger side and Val hesitates. The inside of the car seems very dark. She breathes. Gets in. The A/C must have been on a while; it’s blissfully cold.

Val pulls out from her apartment block. The stacked metal of the porches on the side of the the building are too rusted to glint in the afternoon sun the way the windows do. They fill they rearview mirror completely until she adjusts it.

Danny finishes scooting the chair all the way back and unfolds a map.

“You know how to get to I-95?” He asks. Val knows a lot of things. The fastest route out of Amity Park is one of them.

“Yes.” She says.

They’ve made it an hour in without any injury or spontaneous combustion on Val’s part, but every time Danny yawns, she gets a little closer. This close, this watchful, with him this relaxed, she can see it. His teeth aren’t right. Not in the human way - they’re truly sharp. Not just the incisors, either. His front teeth are straight and white, the picture perfect idea of teeth, but the ones that most humans would never see are just. Afterthoughts. Secondary. A disguise doesn’t matter, that deep in his mouth, because by the time a human is seeing it, it’s too late.

Val thinks of Skulker’s disturbing chicklet teeth, all in a row like neat tombstones, grinning in the rosy sunlight of her porch. Technus’ needles, flashing, laughing. Phantoms’ heavy fangs. Predators, all.

“Ah, sorry,” Says Danny, blinking out of his latest yawn. “Left in a quarter mile on the access road, then we’ll stay on that for, like, an hour.” He says, staring at the map, eyes smudged with bags like bruises.

“Rough night?” Val forces herself to ask. A normal girlfriend would do that, right?

Has she ever been a normal girlfriend?

Has she ever been a normal girl?

Danny grimaces, then clears it too quickly. Like two pictures of him overlapped each other briefly. No transition. One emotion to the next.

“Jazz kept us all up with going over her thesis. She’s turning it in later today. Early, of course.”

“Well, good on her. Glad she’s enjoying herself. Just keep the map open and take break?” Val suggests, keeping her tone light. Nonconfrontational. Questioning and soft, the way boys like it.

“If you’re sure…” Danny demurs. Apparently it works on boy-things, too.

But the next Val glances over, he’s out like a light.

What the hell does he have to be so exhausted about? Valerie is the one running on fumes and energy drinks. All night hunting. Fucking Phantom. All day working. Fucking Margaret. A nap like death in her room for four hours. Her daddy, with a headache. Her daddy, wanting her to be safe with Danny tonight.

What was Danny doing last night to get him so tired? He must have forgotten that he’s already told her that Jazz turned in her thesis last week. The last time he didn't answer a string of her calls at night. The lie doesn’t enrage her. It should, but her anger went dark last night. Turned cold.

She’s never felt like this before. Not even watching her mother get in another man’s car and never come back set her on fire like this.

Val breathes deeply. Lets it out slow. Danny sleeps. Or lies there, mocking sleep.

But it seems real enough. Real enough that when she gets to the end of the access road, she brakes the car completely and waits. The map open on Danny’s lap tells her she can go left to get out to the farms and fields close to the forest paths needed to get to the perfect meteor viewing site. She can go right to hit the switchbacks between farms and follow workman’s roads leading deep into the national park.

Once she’s burned a hole in the map, she turns her scorching gaze on Danny. Examines him without fear of being caught.

Long lashes swept over his cheeks. Wide mouth parted just so. Hint of too-white teeth. Pitch black hair in total disarray. Stud earrings from Tucker. No scars. No marks. No bruises. No blood. Just stupidly perfect skin, pale in the sunset.

Val’s breath rattles in her throat.

His freckles are gone. And he isn’t that pale.

Squinting, she can see that, yes, the bags under his eyes are a bit smeary. The texture of his face a little too even. His freckles, erased completely. Danny doesn’t wear makeup.

Valerie moves quietly, pulls her purse from where she’d stowed it behind her back and digs out the last tester sample of makeup remover she had left in the one pocket. Dumps it all onto a tissue. Eases the glasses off his face. Slowly, slowly. Carefully presses it to Danny’s face, right below his eye, and drags down. His heavy brows scrunch slightly and he sighs but settles back down, like her caress soothed him. His breath on her wrist is cold.

Concealer in Jazz’s shade coats the tissue. The little clean streak on Danny’s face is -

His freckles are -

Valerie turns back to the road, her vision blurring painfully. Leans into the steering wheel, presses the tissue to her mouth to keep quiet until the chemical smell in the cleanser edges her into passing out. Brings her head up, gasping quietly. Dips her fingers into her suit and draws on it to straighten her back, steady her limbs.

Sets a hand on the turn signal without a tremble, bangles clanging down her wrist, and makes her choice.


	7. testing site

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dannymay; moon

If Valerie is going out of town to - to go on a date, then there are a few things she needs to take care of first. She gets through work on autopilot, steeling herself, winding so tightly that all the wires-that-are-not-wires in her body draw painfully tight. Feels a breath away from her suit taking over her on instinct.

It starts at 7, when she mixes a sleeping pill into her daddy’s afternoon tea. It’s the last one she has left, begged off a coworker who didn’t want them after her surgery and hidden in a ziplock baggie taped to the bottom of her mattress. She’s taken them before herself, knows they’re fine, they’re fine, it’s safe. Crazy dreams of flying and burning and castles like rising steam from fresh toast, but fine.

She leaves her daddy on the couch with a kiss to his forehead and climbs out to the porch. The metal grill of it squeaks and sways, rust puffing off like pollen around her ankles. She only waits a moment in the golden hour, then activates her suit and takes off into the clouds at top speed.

Valerie has rarely ever been out at this time. This is usually family time, or when she’s trudging home from work, or chasing down a ghost, or struggling through her homework. To just be out like this? For this moment, it’s wonderful. And she needs it. Takes the time to float above the massive, fluffy clouds, flies higher than she ever has before. Surfs through the fluff and foam until night hits. Keeps her mind empty, catches herself every time her jaw starts to clench, relaxes her hands from fists, stays calm. Stays calm.

She stares up at the moon above for a long, long time.

Then she pulls out her phone and calls Danny.

It rings. Rings. Rings. Drops to voicemail.

Val swallows hard and tries again. No response. The clouds part around her as she slowly descends. Keeps herself empty, calm, cold. Tamps down her fire. Straightens up mechanically as she pierces the bottom of the clouds.

Val stands -

No. The Red Huntress stands on her board, stands against the cloudline, stands over the forest south of Amity Park, stands over the silently floating form of Phantom. He’s staring at the moon. He does that sometimes. Lounging in the air, arms crossed beneath his head, body poised to lay, long tail straight as he glides slowly in the night.

She hates him. She hates him so fucking much.

Over and over she hits the call button on her phone with her thumb, her eyes dry and stinging from staring at the glowing ghost for so long. At first she let it go to voicemail. Now she’s just slamming the call button again and again. No response.

Danny never really did answer his phone after dark, did he? But then again, Valerie already knew that.

Finally, her shitty cheap phone overheats and stops registering her touch. Her arm is wound back for a throw almost before she can reign herself in. Tucks it away back into her suit’s pocket. Ghosts aren’t about to take a single other fucking thing from her. Not anymore. Not ever again.

Val raises her new gun - truly hers, all hers, modified from the combined scraps of her damaged weapons, the stuff of Technus and Mr. Masters, and now of her own design, an improvement on her stolen prototype - and takes aim. It’s easy. The scope is larger and the gun lighter in her hands. Pulling the trigger is easy.

The red shot of light streaks across the sky like a meteor and slams into a green barrier not three feet from the ghost’s chest. He puts on a show of closing his firefly eyes and sighing dramatically, rising up like he’s sitting on something that Val just can’t quite perceive and stretches his arms.

The next shot makes it less than two feet. He finally reacts right, blinking into an upright position and folding his arms, staring at her with eyes like twin moons.

The next shot goes over his head, skimming the floating too-thick too-wispy not-quite-hair.

Phantom frowns, something Valerie can only recognize from the unfortunate amount of time she's had to spend looking at his fucked up face. There's so much shadow where there shouldn't be, so much distortion. Visual snow in place of features. A blacklight darkness that shines light where skin should be.

Valerie has a lot of nightmares, now.

Her gun whines as it charges. Phantom is oddly silent. She doesn’t miss his voice. The clouds drift lower, enclosing them until all that’s left visible of the ghost is the stars of his eyes. All that’s left of Valerie is the light of her suit.

She locks on to his signature with her visor, the familiar sound of something resonating in her peripherals like a struck glass echoes into her vision and stabilizes visually, giving her a target.

She fires once, and then the chase is on. Tonight, she has no plans on giving up. Either she deals with the worst ghost in her life so she can get some kind of a handle on the best one, or she snaps like a firework or something else in her life collapses under its own weight.

The chase goes on into the night. Valerie grazes Phantom’s arm: he sideswipes her board on a pin turn and twists her damn ankle. Val goes until she’s too exhausted to stand, and then just uses her suit to rigidly hold her failing body upright, keeps her finger glued to the trigger. She’s got one, maybe two shots left. A good few hours before she can crawl home.

Tonight, she intends to end this.

Her board does not waver when she swoops down near the lake, but she knows when it’s getting dangerous for her to fly. Phantom appears in the mist over the water, a vague outline of something too far and too close to human.

“What would it take,” Valerie rasps, taking aim, “To end this?”

“All you have to do is stop,” Says Phantom, all sine waves and underwater bubbling. She shoots. Misses. He’s gone.

He’s gone. His aura lights up in her vision, spread huge through the area. Hides his physical position. It puts her squarely into the 20 hz zone, which buzzes in her skull until her drained suit can adjust the audio to filter it out. The headache between her eyes worsens. She’s exhausted. Can hardly see straight. She wants to go home. See her daddy. Sleep. Spend the day with Danny.

God, Valerie wants everything to be okay so bad it hurts. She needs to do this. She needs to end this so everything can just stop. This is the only way the fire burning her from the inside out can be quenched.

Valerie is tired of always being full of rage.

This ends, tonight or tomorrow, she doesn’t care.

Dizziness grips her by the hair and tangles her feet in the sand. Then she’s upright, held still. The white noise in her head stays longer before her suit kicks it. 18 hz. He’s close. Too close. She needs to get herself together. Holds the gun steady to her chest with both hands. Waits.

There is a - a shifting, on Valerie's shoulder. She doesn't feel anything, not yet, but something uncomfortably close to her neck moves in closer.

She snaps only her eyes to track the motion, everything blurring. Masters had taught her well - ghosts react to fear: It is impossible not to be afraid in the presence of ghosts. They feed on that emotion. Thrive on human terror. Valerie has channeled all her excess emotion into rage to curb their power against her. But she’s so tired, tonight. Tired of everything.

Something white or black or hollow moves over her shoulder, and her gut instinct is terror. She can't move.

She can’t move.

The white thing folds over her slowly, lightly, touching with the same pressure as a butterfly, but it may as well be a boulder, for how it feels to be in such close quarters to a ghost. She can't move, can hardly see in the dark with the moon under the clouds and the light of the ghost behind her, weak warnings buzzing in her hindbrain, her bloodstream crashing from too much adrenalin. Too much sudden terror for her to override. Too much active threat for her to react.

It's a hand. Or - too many fingers - two hands. Wavering. Not quite right. Solidly white with no texture to speak of, no reality to them other than the impression of human hands. The idea of hands - of wide palms and long, slender fingers tapered to perfect points instead of blunt tips or nails or even claws. These are talons; clumsy drawings of hands. Echoes of hands. Too sharp, too indistinct, too little, too much.

Too close.

She can't move.

It's the same type of terror - the same irrational terror - as waking up in the night to notice a white hanger against a dark wall, uncertain and strange and wobbling in the dark. It's nothing, of course it's nothing, there's nothing to be afraid of - but that pressure doesn't let up as spots fill the terrified stare of a half blind human squinting in the dark. Trying to see - is it just a hanger? Is it nothing? A threat? A monster?

Is Valerie sleepwalking again?

No. This is real. Valerie has seen enough - she knows those hands.

She swings up her gun in a smooth, tight arc, no wasted movement, and shoots over her shoulder. Point blank.

Phantom yelps as her last weak shot gets him in the face.

"Get off me!" She wheezes, wrenching her shoulder away from him, sliding further in the sand, unsupported. He hovers exactly where she left him, hands curled around the idea of her shoulder, long tail floating off behind him, settled parallel in the air like it means nothing to him, to be able to do that. Like touching her means nothing.

He's too still. She hates him.

She's afraid of him.

It's natural.

He’s covering his face with one hand. Red light drips down. It’s still on his arm, too. A deep wound, the cauterized ectoplasm not healing. An acid of her own design. It works. It really works.

Mr. Masters would be pissed she used it, but he’s not gonna find out.

The gun clicks. Whines weakly as it attempts to charge. Too much moving water too close. No ambient ectoplasm to draw on for conversion. Means Phantom’s weak, too.

He drops his hands and stares at her as she pants, trembling on the shore.

The red light brings his face into better focus than she’s ever seen before. It’s weird, to see him with defined eyelashes and a solid nose. Eerie. Too close for comfort. His mouth is a neat cupid’s bow. Even now, he isn’t baring his teeth at her.

He disappears so quick Val isn’t sure he’s gone for a few seconds. Blinks, gasps. Wobbles where she stands.

“Go home, Val.” Phantom breathes in her ear, icy breath skittering over her cheek. Her suit gives up. His aura slams into her full force, sends her overworked heart pounding, slow but insistent and deafening. The white noise of him cuts out her tongue. Valerie collapses.

Val pries open her eyes to her alarm. Her daddy’s making noise in the kitchen. Smells like coffee. She doesn’t remember going home.

She dreamed about the porch again.


	8. leap of faith

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dannymay2020; isolation

Valerie sits in the dead car, door open to the empty field, waiting. She’s not sure for what, anymore.

Takes in a deep, solid breath, and reaches out to Danny. Aims carefully, wraps her hand around his upper arm. Squeezes.

He wakes with a jolt, hissing, clutches his arm. He sounds like a cat. Teeth just as sharp. The noise comes from high in his throat before he cuts it off abruptly, staring at her.

“Get out.” She says, stepping back from the car. To the side, where the seat backs block his view. She vaults to the roof, activating her suit before her feet can make any sound. Crouches over the passenger’s side door. Waits.

It takes a few seconds before Danny opens it. Swings his legs out.

“Val?” He calls quietly, sounding honestly confused.

The barrel of her gun gets his attention.

Danny turns to her, red stained eyes wide. A dull glow to his irises, a faint, clean redness to the sclera. The smudged makeup on his cheek reveals skin blistered and shiny like horrible sunburn. His freckles are little red pinpricks of light.

Ectoplasm reoxygenated with blood blossom vapor. The least lethal of its uses. A branding more than a wound. A project scraped by Vlad Masters. Val had never understood why he was even comfortable using blood blossoms in any capacity, considering his own weakness to it. Had quietly taken the samples from the hazardous waste bins in his lab.

And Val can see it now, the resemblances between him and Danny. She’d grown too used to Vlad’s eccentricities as a hybrid that she had automatically ignored them in her own boyfriend. Danny is all the more obvious with it, now that Val’s paying attention. Vlad’s always been one for prudence and repression of his ghostly traits. His snarls tempered into fantastic sneers. His looming reads as annoyingly pompous rather than outright predatory. His strong aura translates into a commanding presence. But Danny. She knows it, now, the shape of the thing that she’s been overlooking. Been trained to overlook for five years.

Goddamn Vlad and his obsession with pretense; he had her primed to politely ignore the way Danny coughed to choke his purring silent. How he would freeze up when he got overwhelmed emotionally, eyes unfocused as he drew his caustic aura back in. The too clean shape of his mouth when he sneered with the exact same showing of teeth as Vlad.

Danny is just like Vlad.

No. He’s worse. Vlad has never lied to her, not even about what he is.

Danny’s perfect cupid’s bow mouth hangs open as he stares up at her.

“Move.” She says.

“Val -” He says and isn’t that nice. Phantom called her the same thing.

Phantom had the same wounds.

Phantom has lured her away from Amity Park to the countryside, alone.

Well, turn about is fair play. It’s Val who holds the reigns, now. This isolation away from his anchor is by _her_ design.

Red Huntress is in control tonight.

The red glow over the ghost’s face last night blends and blurs into the same glow over her frightened boyfriend’s face now. It’s the same. The image, the light, the wounds, the boy. But no matter how hard she stares, she can only see Danny.

Danny, caught red eyed and red handed and red fanged and whatever else he might be guilty of. Cast in the red light of her suit. Under the light of the far stars.

“Val -” He tries again and she is not having it.

“Show me,” She snaps, keeping her aim true. Danny is - she doesn’t want to have this confrontation with Danny. She wants Phantom. “Show me your _real_ fucking face.”

She wants the real thing, not the easy little lie she’s been fed.

“Look, Val, it’s not what you think, I -” His voice cuts out with a yelp as his slow, backwards retreat rams his back into the ghost shield around the car. He’s not about to go anywhere. Phantom’s fast. Val’s clocked him at 200 mph, once. He could race her back, get in bed, pretend to have been impersonated out here, tonight, her suit would remain silent, and she’d be back at square one. Back to nothing but doubt and a growing mistrust. A suit gone silent in the face of a monster.

“Val, please listen,”

But Valerie Gray is not some stupid piece of tech. She’s _human._ Clever and terrified and willing to suss out the truth no matter what reality tries to sell her. And she knows damn well that Vlad is Danny’s godfather. The strong signature of Phantom dives off her radar when he’s hiding in human skin. That’s how he kept getting away from her. That was the trick. Vlad always had a weakness for family. She should have suspected something sooner.

Danny lets out a deep breath, slowly moves to hold his hands up in surrender. The mocking position Phantom takes with her when he pleads for a night off or a s _weet little truce, just for this one enemy, just this once, Val, please, trust me. Let me help you. Trust me._

Val primes her gun. Remembers. Her toes tap the edge of the roof. The moon glints off the barrel.

“You stole my prototype.”

“That -” He bites off his words, winces, guilt crawls all over his face. Then he takes another breath and straightens up further. Shoulders back. Stance wide and steady. Expression too calm, too controlled. A sureness that wasn’t there before. That didn’t exist in Danny as anything but an easy-going confidence.

This. This is Phantom.

The shape of his body is too solid, but the blur of strong, wide shoulders and the light of bright eyes fills in the familiar silhouette.

“Val… that kind of weapon isn’t something that should exist. I couldn’t let you just. Just use it on someone. I didn’t hurt you, right? I just made sure you didn’t have it,” A half pleading tone edges into his voice. And what an empty fucking thing. Didn’t hurt her. Bare fucking minimum, for a boyfriend. But not for a ghost she’s been hunting down for years. Phantom, she’s always expected to hurt her. And he has. Sprained wrists and ankles. Three concussions. Bruises on bruises. Took out her engines and broke her arm junior year.

And didn’t - wasn’t Danny the one who helped her at school, after that? They’d only been vague friends at the time, but he’d seemed so concerned. Been so helpful, careful not to be overbearing and respectful of her continued ability to help herself. A thread of guilt clear in him that left Val feeling validated in her hunting, shamefully. She’d thought herself his protector.

Nothing like the second time Skulker pulled a knife on her, and smiled at her flinch. No triumph to it. Guilt.

Like now, how his red, red eyes are sweeping over her, like he does when he’s searching her for hidden injuries. How he looks right before he frowns at her, just a little, and gets out the unending supply of bruise cream. But right now, bathed in red, that’s wrong to see. This is Danny, her boyfriend. But in the lines of his body and his stance and the hardness around his eyes is Phantom.

Val wants one or the other. Not both.

Not this too solid ghost where a too ghostly boy should be.

But in the end, aren’t those things the same?

“How long.”

It’s a stupid question. Phantom’s been around since freshman year. Val’s been hunting him since a few months into it. But she wants to hear what the fuck he could possibly have to say for himself. For five years of lies. For six and a half months of lying to her face.

He gives her a look. Knows it for the test it is. That distinct little frown. Phantom. Looking down at her from on high while she wallowed on the shore. Danny, looking up at her when she said she’d cut the loss of whatever homework. Not quite disappointment. A low challenge. _Come on_ , that look said. _I know you can do better than this. Try a little harder._

_For me?_

And, god, it had always worked, hadn’t it. Played Val like a sucker. Sat her down at her daddy’s table or his kitchen and got her to make the effort at a normal life. Slowed himself down so she could give chase more cleanly. Tackled ghosts out of the air if they got too close to her. Gave her everything she needed to succeed. With him. Against him.

_What the fuck is wrong with him?_

“No,” Val snarls. This test - it’s meaningless. She knows, he knows. Danny is dead. Long live Phantom. What she wants to know is -

“Why?”

“I… I guess I just didn’t want to go yet.” Danny says quietly. Hands lowered. Searching her face like he can see through her visor to her soul. To her own ghost. Val swallows hard.

“Why,” She corrects herself, steadies herself, “Did you lie to me?” Ask the right questions. Get specific. Accuse against personality traits. Make them get defensive. Unsettle them.

And sure enough, something flashes across Danny’s face that looks close to anger. Just a second. One of those too-quick mood swings of his. That restrained temper.

“I never lied to you, Val,” He says firmly. Believes it, too.

“Then why _the fuck_ ,” She snarls, he flinches. Moves back enough to scrape a heel against the shield, lights the cleaing up in green for a moment. Sparks fly. “Did I have to find out that my boyfriend is dead five years after it happened? Huh? What the fuck is that?”

“Why should I have told you?” He finally snaps back at her. Waves his hands as he speaks. “Maybe I wanted to see if I could trust you first! And look at that thing,” The glare he spares for her gun is downright venomous. Phantom all the way through. Danny, when he’s really pissed. Same look. Same look.

Same person.

“Could you get off about the stupid fucking gun? I’m trying to - to talk to you!”

“Well then get your gun off me!”

Val forces a hard breath through her nose. “Fine.” She snaps, clipped. Sharp. “Fine.” Says Danny, the same. She lowers the gun, stands over him on the car. Toes the metal edge of the roof. The shield arcs above her, lines of light in her vision. Distracting. She deactivates her visor. Looks at him without the useless screen in her way. Just as much information. Still no trace of a signature.

“Well?” She asks flatly, opening her arms wide and dropping them. “That good enough for you, ghost?”

“No,” He says. “Come down?” _Come back to bed._ “Please, it doesn’t have to be like this. We can just talk,” _Stay on a little longer? I just wanna talk to you tonight._

Val sits on the roof, legs over the open door. The car bounces. Metal squeaks. She says nothing. Danny watches her like he’s waiting for more than that. He’s not getting it. Not tonight. Maybe not ever again.

He takes a tiny step forward. Val waits.

“Okay, can we talk now?” He asks quietly.

“Sure.” Says Val. “Lets hear it, ghost boy.”

Lets see him try to lie to her again.


	9. set up

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay, dannymay2020 is over! it was my first time participating, and it was really fun. but that means im no longer on a controlled schedule, so posting will happen at a rate not equal to "9 chapters in a month" very probably.
> 
> please see end notes for important story update

Val makes Danny feel human, and he really doesn’t want to give that up.

“Okay,” Val says slowly, looking half concerned and half suspicious. “What do you want to tell me?”

They’re at his place, today. Val’s dad is working late and he doesn’t want them alone together, which is understandable because it’s so normal. His parents are ‘chaperoning’ by being in the house in general. Danny’s never been the Suspicious Boyfriend before, except maybe to the Mansons, who consider him a Suspicious Boy, at best. It’s kind of cool. It’s the best sort of mundane drama and Danny is kind of living for it.

Not that Val and him are officially dating yet. Their preliminary date last week was genuinely awesome, and probably the most relaxing day Danny’s had in months. So he hopes they will.

“I’m - severely ectocontaminated.” He confesses, wincing at the half lie. Might as well start strong.

“Oh, because of your parents?” Val asks, relaxing at the non world ending relationship bomb. That part’s next. Her phrasing makes him grimace, but he nods.

Danny isn’t the type to lie about certain things. He doesn’t have a choice on the other things. He wants to be as honest with her as he can. She deserves every piece of the truth that he can afford to give her at this point. He really wants to be able to trust her with all of it. But not yet. Sam's right; Val is too involved to just bring in cold. It wouldn't do anything other than alienate her. Or piss her off. Besides, they only had one tentative date. Just to see. To know. Danny's been more into Val than he logically should be, and he's aware of himself enough at this point to admit that the feelings he has for her are very, very ghostly. Opposite Tucker and Sam, whom he loved as a human first, then later latched onto as a ghost. Danny is a little concerned he might not be able to do it the other way around. It might just be his ghost that's in love with Val, but as two humans they could be incompatible. No way to know until they try.

This is worth it. Val is worth it. Jazz says Danny is worth it. Danny takes a deep breath.

“I’ve been around ectoplasm since I was born, basically, so there’s some issues I have. It’s better to warn you first, before anything happens.”

“What do you mean?” And it’s nice, actually, that she’s more confused than disturbed. Good old Amity Park Citizen priorities. Not that Val’s technically Amity Park. She’s a suburb kid. Tucker has money on Danny expanding his territory to include her area, but Sam thinks it’ll be person based, since he’s been kind of protective of her even as an enemy.

“I mean…” He runs out of words. What can he say? _Sorry, that sentence was misleading! I’m actually solid ectoplasm. You remember Flubber? That’s me, but worse because I’m inherently caustic to human flesh. It’s more like The Thing, actually._

Sam might be proud of the permanent greenish burn on her tongue, but Danny isn’t. Tucker’s been smacked upside the head on more than one occasion for making bad jokes about sequels to _Teeth_ featuring Tucker Junior.

He looks around helplessly for a moment before settling on an unused flashcard. It’ll do. Val makes a noise at him when he sticks the end of it in his mouth, but he just waves a hand at her to wait. He taps the card with his tongue and then holds it up.

It’s stained faintly green, and after a few seconds it starts to wilt.

“Huh.” Says Val.

“Wait.” Says Danny.

The ectoplasm spread into the paper fibers starts to pull together, making the card bubble and warp. It eats through the weaker material, absorbing the ash into itself to compensate for the lack of energy. After about ten seconds, the card is a few scraps in Danny’s hand, and a small blob of ectoplasm rests on his palm.

“Holy shit, Danny!”

“Yeah, I know. Crazy, right?” He goes for casual. But Val is flashing through so many emotions that he can’t tell what she’s feeling anymore. She’s too used to ectoplasm and its dangers to misunderstand him bare handing some like he’s a grizzled chef touching Carolina reapers without gloves. But he can’t risk lying to her about this. It’s too obvious, too dangerous. It’s not like he expects anything from her - up to and including continuing to want to date him after this horrible conversation is over - but one uncontrolled kiss from Danny and she could be short a tongue. So.

“So -” He tries to start, rubbing his neck awkwardly with his other hand.

“It really doesn’t hurt you any?” She asks. Her bangles clink and rattle as she makes several aborted motions to reach for his hand. Not once does she reach for the blaster in her pocket, the weapons in her blood. Her trust makes him feel worse.

“Yeah, it’s fine for me. I passed the five percent fatality threshold in like fourth grade. But anybody who, you know, gets into contact with any of my body fluid wouldn’t be. Is that. Um, is that too much?”

Whatever is going on in Val’s head is rapidly reaching a conclusion. The ectoplasm in his hand is slowly starting to disperse into the atmosphere. Normally he would reabsorb it, but he can’t risk that around Val. Not yet.

Danny really, really wants this to be normal. He wants to be normal for Val.

The warmth of her hands burns bright against his wrist when she carefully holds his hand, watching as the last of the ectoplasm fades into the air.

“You’re always so cold,” She marvels.

Yeah, it’s because I’m dead, he should say. What he does say is “Yeah, that’s a side effect.”

She draws callused fingertips over his palm, brushing lightly over the little scraps of paper. He can’t repress his shiver at the too-light touch. Val drops his hand instantly, blurting out an apology.

“It’s fine,” Danny reassures her, folding his arms around his knees and scanning her face. “You’re not freaking out?”

“I am,” Val says slowly, thoughtfully. “Not, uh, not exactly what I expected this to be about. But it’s not…” She trails off, flicking one of her bangles around her wrist in a smooth circle. Bites her lip.

“Well, then you’ll love this next bit.” Jokes Danny, a little more relaxed.

“There’s more?” Val asks, eyeing him up, more incredulous than anything, still twirling her bangle with an expert fingertip.

“It’s less dramatic?” He offers. “But also more normal. That was the bad one.”

“Bad news first, huh?” She drawls, smiling a little, leaning closer. Unafraid. He really likes Val.

“Yeah, ha.” The human parts of himself feel so mundane, in comparison. Danny scratches the back of his neck, giddy with how well that went.

“We didn’t really hang out in elementary school, but we were in the same class a couple times. I don’t know if you remember. Just figured I should ask, but, uh. You do remember that I’m transgender, right?”

Val blinks. “Oh, yeah,” She says belatedly. She totally forgot. Danny is a little flattered, but also a little concerned. She was an A-lister back when Sam was, and they still seem to get on fine, for all that Sam has Issues being platonic friends with girls. “No, I mean, I remember. Um… am I doing something wrong?”

“What? No! No, just. Making sure you knew, is all.”

“Oh, good. You just never really talked about it, so I didn’t think I needed to say anything.”

“I mean, we can talk about gender if you want. Sam’ll want in on that, though. Which, uh.” Danny bites his lip, briefly halted. Damn, but Val’s doing great so far? She did go through a lot, so she’s pretty mature about most things. Just not the other half of Danny, unfortunately. This conversation is giving him a probably untenable amount of hope about telling her more things in the future. That confused, hopeful hesitance must read well on his face, because Val gives him a look.

“What?” She drawls, leaning back on her hands on his bed, relaxed.

“Last thing?” Danny offers weakly, trying to reign in the emotion train.

Val snorts. “There’s more?”

“I could write a list, if you want,”

Val actually laughs. Collapses back on the NASA comforter. There’s a bit of irony in the sound. Must be thinking of her own list of caveats. Danny can’t help but quietly hope she might share some of them with him.

Maybe not today. But soon. Val’s trust comes so much harder, for all that he’s taking so much of it from her.

“Okay,” She says after catching her breath. “What now?”

“I’m also polyamorous and dating Sam and Tucker.” He blurts out. Bandaid style. Confirmation of something she probably already suspects. Several people at school have noticed so far, but there have also been the ‘best friends’ and ‘adorable platonic soulmates’ type comments, so. Turns out Danny doesn’t do platonic very well. Might be a possessive and intensely emotional ghost thing, or it might be a Danny thing. Kind of died to too early to get to the know the difference.

Val blinks a couple times in a row.

“Huh,” She says.

“That’s not… something you have to do. Date them, too, I mean. I don’t expect you to be okay with nonmonogamy, if you aren’t. But that’s it, this time. I swear.”

Her stare at his ceiling doesn’t look too bad, but that’s a lot to process at once. Danny opens his mouth to break the silence, but pauses when Val sits back up. Searches his face quietly for a long moment. Danny waits her out, getting more concerned about what she’s searching him for. He lied to her. He’s lying to her right now. He’s lying to his parents. He’s lying to Mr. Gray, which somehow feels like the worst out of all of them.

He really likes Val, but she’s probably going to try to kill him later tonight. Maybe this is too much to hope for. Maybe they should call this quits while he’s ahead.

Maybe Sam and Tucker are right in their reservations.

“I’m bisexual,” Val’s voice breaks into his growing panic. It’s Danny’s turn to blink at her. She shrugs.

He takes the offered dive. “Is that your list, then?”

Val swallows hard, her eyes dance away from him for a moment before cutting back, steely with cultivated guilt when she smiles and says, “Yeah, that’s it for me. Not a deal breaker, is it?”

Danny smiles for her, and holds her hand.

He wants to help Valerie feel human again, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> //jumpcut to a poly negotiation meeting val shows up to like a job interview, but its just pizza and a movie  
> This is the Begone Transphobes chapter, as noted in store policy. I actually wasnt gonna publish it, just wrote it as background info, but then i figured hey might as well state the obvious and weed out the weak.
> 
> also! ive never written from a cis gendered character's POV before, so let me know how im doing so far. i want val to come across as authentic to the cis experience.


	10. shooting stars

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *leans in real close to the mic* hey. pssst, hey. theres a metaphor in this one.  
> also, this is the end of part 1! finally made it yall. now the real fun can start

“Okay,” Val says slowly, all suspicion. “What do you want to tell me?”

Crickets scream at her for breaking the silence. Danny stands in the tall grass, one hand griping anxiously at the back of his neck. Sam's hoodie. Tucker's earrings. Val's brand on his face. The truth, dragged out into the open.

Danny drags his hand over his mouth and keeps it there for a long moment. Closes his eyes. Sighs heavy.

"Okay," He rasps. "Where do you want me to start?" Sounds so defeated. Like he couldn't just kill Val with his bare hands whenever he wanted to. Could end it any second. Val's the one with the gun on her lap, but she's also the one trapped in here with him. Ever since Technus decided to randomly gift her an invasive upgrade, shields not of her own design have been tricky to get through. The one planted on the roof of the car at her back is FentonTech; good for a ten foot radius for up to 24 hours. Neither of them are going anywhere.

Val traces the lines of her gun while she considers the question. Stares sightlessly at the red star in her hands. _Does_ she care about the beginning, when it's the resolution she's after? But then again, it looks like even the basics are not what she thinks they are. Everything she thinks she knows might well be a lie.

"How did you die?" She asks, low. Worst question to ask a ghost, best way to start an interrogation. Basic tactic. Rile them up. Stomp on their grave. Make them react.

Danny's eyes flare before they snap shut, and he presses his hand tighter to his mouth for a few seconds, every line of him Phantom tense. Val watches him breathe with controlled steadiness until he drops his hand and glares hard at her. More of the makeup is smudged. More red pours out.

"What's the most painful day of your life?" He spits.

Val. Knows what he's doing. Evading the question. Throwing it back at her. Trying to drill empathy into her wired skull.

"Doesn't matter right now." She says. This isn't about her.

"Oh, yeah? Eye for an eye. You tell me, I tell you." He says, bitterness sinking deep into his tone. "Couldn't have been that bad, since you lived through it."

And that's. That is. He doesn't know shit about Valerie Gray's life. Hell, he's the one who ruined it. Took away the tiny bit of stability they had just scraped together. But that's not what she's thinking of. She can't. Hates thinking about it. Can't stop. The rose gold glint of the evening sun, flashing off a car window as it rolls closed from the street in front of the big white house on Rosemary Street. Her daddy's sure hand squeezing her shoulder tight enough to ache. An empty, gaping wound in the dining room when she came back for the table. A fight that never came because her daddy had already lost. Two suitcases strapped to the rusted kayak struts of her uncle's car. The squeak of rickety metal and rattling AC for the longest, shortest drive of Val's life. Everything gone, just like that.

Has Val ever felt alive since then?

Didn't some part of her die in her childhood home?

But she still has a heartbeat. A life. A future.

But. So did Danny, last she checked. What all did Danny even lose? Everything? Nothing?

"Didn't you? You got a body, don't you? Some kind of life." Val snaps, fingers tight around her gun.

"Some kind, yeah. I'm still dead, Val. It's kind of rude of you to ask."

"Kind of rude of you not to tell. Maybe I don't want to be dating a ghost."

"That's why I didn't tell you. There wasn't any point in you knowing unless it became important for you. And I - there wasn't any way to know how important you were going to be unless we tried to be together, at least for a while."

"So, what, I'm supposed to believe that you were ever going to tell me? When it was convenient for you?"

"Not convenient," He snaps. "When we knew we could actually trust you." His voice trails off, eyes sliding back to her gun again. And okay. Okay, maybe if he didn't want to be shot in the face he shouldn't have lied to her. Maybe it's his fault this happened. Valerie doesn't regret shooting Phantom, not entirely. She does dislike the look on Danny's burned face. The look of his face. Those eerie red eyes track her hands as she flips the safety on and slams the stupid gun down on the car roof. Close at hand, but out of the picture. She's still got all her innate weaponry, anyway. Danny immediately relaxes. Like it was that easy. Like it's some kind of sign of trust from Valerie, not her trying to keep him focused on her. Not her feeling the least bit guilty for it.

"This doesn't make sense," She spits, frustrated. "Why do you have to be a ghost?"

Danny licks his lips, looks away. "Well," He starts in a tone that means he's seriously about to try joking with her right now. Val glares. He sighs deeply instead. "I was ectocontaminated to start with -"

That's a familiar line. But hasn't he lied to her about less? He never actually did give her a reason, the first time around. "What, because of your parents?" She snipes.

Danny flinches. Wraps his arms around himself. "Yeah," He says quietly.

Val stares, abruptly thrown off course. The Fentons have certainly simmered down over the years. Used to be right there with her, shooting up at Phantom. Wanting to study him. When did that change? Val can't remember.

"Tell me how you died." She says.

Danny closes his eyes. Stays silent for a long, long moment. A streak of light flashes across the sky. "No." He says finally. "You don't get to know that. You don't need to know that. Not now." Not anymore, he means. Val isn't stupid. She's just- running out of anger. Trying to make it come back. This whole conversation is just. Awful. She doesn't want it. Valerie Gray has never been good with words. She's good in a fight. Good with a gun. Maybe that's a bad thing.

"Then show me how you do it. Show me Phantom."

Danny holds her stare, doesn't move. Something flashes in the dark. Bright like the next comet, but around him. Same as Vlad. Same as Vlad. The grass rustles in a wave as he changes. His signature lights up her visor.

Then, Phantom is floating before her. His red eyed stare is the same hollow, haunted look as Danny's moments before. The red burning in his face keeps him in focus. Keeps him recognizable. There isn't any makeup hiding the damage in this form. Nose, cheeks, forehead and down a little onto his mouth is illuminated an angry red. Less burnt skin and more infected ectoplasm. Val's memories of last night are fuzzy at best. Can't tell if it's healed up any or if it's gotten worse. It is experimental. Volatile. She doesn't like the accusation of it. The steely eyed victim staring her down in silence while the pain she's painted on him glows for all to see. It isn't fair. Val's guilt is so visible, turned against her like that.

Her own wound is silent. A hidden stab in her heart. She's still wrapped in red armor. No marks. No tears. No pain that she can throw back at him except for what's in her heart.

A surgery scar on her arm from Junior year. That's it. That's it. That's all Val has. She doesn't want to be pared down to her words. Doesn't know what to say. How to wake up from this nightmare, find herself on the porch all over again.

"There," Danny says finally. "The real Danny Phantom. Are you happy now?" Spreads his arms wide, the wisps of his tail curling in the soft breeze. Opening himself up like a target. Like he does when he's teasing her bad aim when she's exhausted. There's a red gash on his arm. A bitter look on his too-solid, too-transparent face. A deep buzz in his aura that her suit doesn't like.

No. She's not gonna be happy. Not for a while.

"Why? Why do you have to be _Phantom_?" Why _this_ ghost, why this boy? Val had gotten in that car and brought him out here, alone, so she could confront him. As a ghost. As her boyfriend. As her friend. If he was just dead, just a dead boy in her town, who she just celebrated their high school graduation together with, then. Then Val was willing to be open. To listen to his side of the story. To learn why she never suspected him. Why he stayed. How he reigned himself in so well, if others knew, if Vlad knew, if she was gonna know any time soon. Decide then if he was worthy of forgiveness. And then.

And then.

"What do you mean, why? I thought you only cared about how," He says, glowing. Floating. Smokey hair rising and falling like he's swimming in the muggy summer air.

"Why are you - why do you have to be Phantom?" It hurts. To say it. Danny is Phantom. Why did he have to make her see this? Why couldn't she leave well enough alone? She could have been happy right now, maybe, if everything worked out right. But Phantom ruins everything. His signature dances in her awareness, pulls hard at the harpoon he'd lodged in her heart all those years ago. Draws all her targeting systems like a moth to flame.

But Danny just looks at her. Raises his chin, squares his stance. "Because I want to be." He says, all firm conviction. Green flashes in the back of his eyes for a second. "Why are you Red Huntress?"

Because she has to be. Danny doesn't know shit about her life. He doesn't know shit _about_ life, anymore. Of course he doesn't understand this betrayal. He's dead. Doesn't have a heart, for all that she's felt it beating.

"Because someone," She snarls, her suit pulling tight to stop her fists from shaking, "Forced me to."

He finally bares his sharpened teeth at her. There's no snarl about it, just a silent threat. Underbite like a bulldog. Huge, broad canines. Sharp incisors. Ripping teeth. Val's seen those teeth before. Danny, laughing beside her on Tucker's couch, long bottom eyeteeth flashing in the light of the TV. She'd thought it was kind of cute. Distinct. Phantom, mouth dripping blue from a rough brawl with Ember. Horrifying in its visceral violence. Distinct. That's the mouth she's been kissing.

"No one made you do any of this, Val. Unless," His eyes narrow sharply, head cocking with a painfully sudden change. No motion. Just difference. "Vlad's forcing you?"

"No," Val snaps. "Mr. Masters is a good man. He's not the one who's been lying to me for years!"

Danny starts laughing. Mouth full of teeth and lime green light. Doubles over in the air. Gasps like it hurts and clutches his face for a few seconds. Bitter laughter doesn't sound right in his voice; sine waves aren't meant for it. Val winces at the noise. Understands her little advantage over him.

"Vlad is a ghost." She says flatly, a note of triumph in her voice. Now she knows why he and Phantom have never gotten along. Or, well, she doesn't. Not really. Danny is weird about Vlad in general. Vlad's pretty tight lipped about Danny. Uninformative about Phantom. There's something there. Shared history. A story she doesn't know. But she knows enough to get some ground back, here. Danny stops laughing at her, at the situation. At her trust. Looks stunned for a moment before sinking back into that bitter dullness.

"He really told you?" He muses. Not surprised so much as interested. Scans her face quietly. "And you took that well, then?"

"Yeah," Says Val calmly. "Since he wasn't lying to me about it."

"Hey, I kept exactly as much shit from you as you did from me. I told you everything you needed to know about my human half, and besides, all I ever saw of you was yours."

Val jolts at that. "Excuse me? I am not _half a human,_ you -"

"That's not what I said. You do know that you have an ectosignature, right? Did Vlad ever tell you _that_?" He asks. A comet streaks by. Then another. An owl hoots in the trees beyond the field. Vlad had never said anything about that. But. Valerie has a ghost-tech suit cybernetically implanted in her body. And sure, maybe it was taking things a little too far to allow that when she was so young and stupid and full of rage, but.

But she's trusted Vlad for exactly as long as she's hated Phantom. One axis is already shifting off the face of the earth. Val slams her foot down on the other before her whole world can turn over. Shelves that concept. Puts Vlad back in his box. Deal with that later. Whatever enmity is between the two ghosts doesn't concern her at the moment. Danny's only trying to distract her right now. He can't win.

So she raises her chin. Bluffs. "Yes, he did."

Phantom looks like he sucked on a lemon. Almost pouting. Frowns at her. Red eyes flickering. "And it was that easy for you to accept him?"

"This ain't about Vlad." Val says. "You lied to me for five years, Danny Fenton. And then you dated me! And lied every goddamn day, right to my face! You didn't even give me the chance to accept you, you jackass!"

"Well you never bothered to tell me your secrets! That's also five years! That's also the whole time we were together! But let me ask you this: _who was shooting at who?_ "

Val can't look at his face. He points at it more aggressively.

"Well, I didn't know it was you!"

"And that matters? You made a gun that's meant to permanently hurt ghosts! What part of any of that is okay? Why would you go so far? What should I care that you made it just to hurt _only_ me? What the hell did I ever do to you?"

Val's visor slams into place. Red in her eyes. " _You ruined my life!_ " She screams.

"No, I didn't! I've told you - I've been telling you! Why do you even think that?" He yells back.

"You were there! You and that - that shitty fucking hellhound! You destroyed everything! We lost everything! The job, the loan, the house! All of it! Everything we had left, you took from us." Everything gone, just like that. The sun glaring at Val's stinging, aching eyes from a rickety metal porch while her daddy begged on the phone in the next room. Pleaded on his fucking knees for the bank to understand. Empty rooms again. Two suitcases again. All Val remembers of that day is rust. It puffed up from the railing of the porch as she hid there, filled her eyes, her nose, her lungs. Fell from the pipes in the roof of Axion as it crashed around her daddy. Arrived on her doorstep in a neat cardboard box.

Maybe Val is full of metal now. Breathed it in that day until there was no room for air. Maybe all she can do is corrode from here on out. It doesn't matter. Nothing else matters.

Nothing but this lying ghost, bright as the setting sun. Staring at her in horror. Not speaking. Not moving. Val pants hard, keeps her tears behind her visor. Loves the soothing red of it. How it blocks the light just enough.

"Val," He whispers. Floats a little closer. Reaches for her with white hands like a nightmare come to life.

"You have ten fucking seconds to tell me the truth," Val manages, whipping the gun up from the roof and deactivating the safety with a thought. It whirs. Full charge. If there even is a truth to tell.

His hands are raised, and it's honest this time. Val really has him right where she's always wanted him. Where she's never dreamed of seeing Danny in her worst nightmares. Back against a ghost shield, gun to his face. Fear on his face. Guilt on his face. Her red reflecting off every inch of him.

Perseus spits out a comet when he says, "Cujo - that hound. He really is just an animal, Val. I swear. He's just a dog. He doesn't understand. He didn't know what he was doing when he went back. He died there, okay? They put the security dogs down when they got that new system. Being near your grave, it can... it makes ghosts..." He trails off quietly for a moment. Val knows what it does to ghosts. She's a fucking ghost hunter. She doesn't need to wait for him to tell her this shit. She jerks the gun meaningfully. His mouth snaps shut. Opens. "I was just trying to get him out of there. I was there the whole time, Val, I _know_. I just couldn't stop him. You saw - you know how strong he is. And in that state, I could only hold on to his collar. I did manage to get him away, but he'd already - torn the place up. He's just a dog, Val. He doesn't understand how big he is, or how to use his power very well. He was threatened and in a bad place, and he reacted. I swear. I swear to you, Val, that's the truth." Sounds so honest behind the indistinct bubbling of a dead voice. Looks right at her, red eyes all wet, and pleas, "I didn't know about what happened to you. I'm sorry, okay? On Cujo's behalf or whatever it is you want, I promise I never meant for you - for anyone to get hurt."

Val drinks it in. She's heard flashes of this story before. In the air. On the ground. Under the muzzle of her gun. It's too clean. Too easy. There is no monster at the end of her book. Just a dead dog. Just a stupid ghost boy trying to capture it. Just Val, looking at herself in the mirror and seeing red reflecting from behind her pupils. Just her daddy on the couch, begging her not to walk away from him by dying. Just a ledge made of rust that Val's been on the verge of falling from for five years.

And he expects her to let that all go? Just like that?

How does a boy who died and couldn't bear to move on get off on thinking giving up on pain is that simple? Valerie lowers her gun. Danny closes his eyes like she's raised it.

This is a war of hurting words. And all Valerie is is a gun. She wants to shoot Danny Phantom. She wants to hurt Danny Fenton. She wants to end this.

"Tell me. Tell me the worst day of your life, Danny Phantom." She wheezes. Stares down the lip of the car roof. At the grass. The fireflies. The ghost.

"Why?" He cries, voice echoing like a gunshot. "Why do need to know that so bad? Do you want me to tell you how bad it hurt? How I cried like a baby the whole the time? How I fucking died when I was fourteen and no one noticed? Is that what you wanna hear so bad? _That I've been through enough pain to satisfy you? Why's it matter to you how I died **when all you care about is that it makes me a monster?**_ " Val's suit runs double time, protecting her from the horrific, growing noise of a true ghostly wail. A banshee's cry of pain sings static into her audio. Crackles something in her vision. Lights up his aura in green.

Danny covers his face again. Gasps through sudden luminescent tears. Rage to pain to rage again. Like flipping a switch. He's just a ghost. Just a loose bundle of deadly emotions, waiting to go off. Val's finger on his trigger. She's always been good with guns.

"Can't you just accept me? As a ghost?" He rasps. "As a human?"

Val sits with it. A group of comets streak by.

"Sorry, Danny." She finally manages, her voice more choked than she cares to try to stop. "That's a deal breaker."

"Yeah," Danny chokes, just as wrecked. "It is." Floats back from her. Crosses his arms. Draws in tight like he does when Val's hurt herself. When Sam's family has pulled some shit again and she's ranting. A pain he can't escape or ease for them. Helpless. Guilty.

No. No, it's the denied obsession of an anchored ghost, unable to keep his favorite humans happy. Wanting to go out and kill whoever interfered with them in vengeance. Locked into good behavior by manacles in the shape of two pairs of guilty human hands. Reaching for a third accomplice.

Right now, Val could say _lets just forget about this, I want to go home_ , and he would take it. He would fall back into pretending everything between them is normal. Back into his delusion of humanity. Drop all these feelings he's playing at and return to his cute little boyfriend act with delight. Want Valerie to keep up the game with him. She could do that. Right now. Make all this go away with just the promise of fulfilling what he wants. What he stayed behind for. Just let him keep thinking that he loves her. It would be easy.

Val slides off the edge of the roof. Crushes the grass. Deactivates her suit. Phantom isn't one for potshots when she's down. Has always waited up for her. Dragged her home once or twice, she thinks. Sat with her daddy and patched her up. Gently taken care of her in the morning. Lied to her, in every way a person can be lied to. Can't give her the fight she wants. Can't give her the clean, easy ending she wants. Can't be what she wants him to be.

He's dead. Danny is dead. And Val is the one left behind. All she could do is spend the rest of her life chasing him down. Talking him down. Keeping him on a short leash until something inevitably gives.

Her suit alerts her to heightened proximity. She looks up. Danny's floating over the roof. Turns the shield off with a flick of the switch. Those machines are coated in antiecto and electrified with a separately powered internal shield. A ghost should not be able to touch them.

Then again, it is FentonTech.

They hold each other's reddened eyes for a while. Behind Danny, behind Phantom, a whole shower of stars falls out of the sky. Perseus, the hero.

"I'm - " Val clears her throat. "I'm leaving. Keep the stupid fucking gun. Don't try to follow me."

Danny turns her gun over in his hands. White gloves. Neat talons. None of Valerie's guilt lies red there; nothing keeps them from blurring in her sight. Too quick. Too slow. Too much. Too much. Too much.

Too little, too late.

"I'm not the one who chases you," He says quietly. Val's fists clench. So what if he's right. So what.

She turns away. Walks beyond the small line of burnt grass that marked the edge of the shield. Grass up to her thighs. Says, "Goodbye, Phantom."

"Bye, Val." And isn't that nice. Danny called her the same thing.

At the treeline, she pauses for just a second. Looks back. Just to check that he's still there.

On the roof of the car, both doors hanging open in the dark, is a ghost. Bright white light. A fallen star. He's looking up at the moon. He does that sometimes. It looks lonely.

Val goes home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ;3c
> 
> val//beats back her trauma with a rage stick  
> danny//beats back his trauma with a denial stick


	11. samantha bysshe-shelley manson

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PART 2
> 
> ONE WEEK LATER

Valerie shows up to the park in her casual clothes. Good running shoes. Earrings like she hasn’t worn in a long time. Hoops. Bad for fighting, easy to take off.

Sam Manson shows up dressed for Val’s funeral.

She looks great. As always.

The hat was a gift from Danny. Near half foot wide brim, edged with little black beads shaped like bats. Val had been there, when he was looking for a birthday gift for her. Held her hand as they passed through the mall and shyly asked her to help choose the gift. They'd waffled back and forth between the massive sun hat and a kitschy snapback with a huge Halloween witch decal on the brim. Val had made the final call. Felt like it was right. Tacky statement piece. Aggressively high femme.

Val’s never really understood Sam, but then again she’s never really had to. They’d existed together in the loosest of senses during high school. Val’s first meeting with Sam had consisted of Dash introducing her and Paulina to his new football friends. The other guys on the team. And Sam, they/them. A meeting between half-mast eyes ready for a fight and oddly tasteful black lipstick over a red letterman and a young, floundering Valerie, who was still learning how to fly. A sharp spark had passed from one gaze full of barely contained rage to the other, and Sam had nodded at her. Not even a month later, she’d come out at lunch, snapped her compact shut like she could hurt someone with it, and dropped out of the team.

Valerie had left them behind about three months later. Couldn't stand the pointless posturing of spoiled rich children who didn't understand what fighting for your life felt like. Who traded ghost stories like pokeman cards in the gym while Val wore long sleeves to hide the bruising. They could never understand.

Maybe Sam and Val hadn’t gotten along because they were too alike.

The hat looks good on her.

"Okay," Says Sam. "Give me the stuff and then we'll talk."

“How about I hold on to it and we talk first?”

Sam’s frown is thunderous as she stares down at Val from her current seven inch advantage. Val knows the equally thunderous sound of those platforms hitting the floor at the foot of her bed with prefect clarity. Sam isn’t a negotiable person. She doesn’t give when someone else begs.

But Val isn’t about to ask nicely.

“Fine.” Sam hisses after a long examination of Valerie’s unmoving resolve. Not a compromise. An understanding. A beat of silence. Sam relaxes slowly, nods to herself. “You’ll come with, then.” She decides.

“Come where?”

Sam’s already turned away. Walks back down the path to the street. “My place. I want you to see what we have to do to neutralize that shit you made.” Clipped. Sharp.

Val’s breath squeezes out from between her painfully clenched teeth as she bites off a useless argument. She wants to know. She wants to argue.

She follows Sam down to a sleek black car parked in the shade. Val's surprised she can drive. Used to complain freshman year that her parents wouldn't let her. Chauffeured everywhere.

Guess everything's different now.

Car's still expensive as shit, though.

"Well," Sam drawls as she tosses her hat in the backseat and Val buckles in. Val keeps her bag steady on her lap. "Did you talk to Tucker yet?"

No. No, Val hasn't talked to Tucker yet. He's tried to talk to her. She doesn't want to hear it. Tucker's shitty text blindsided her. Tossed fire on her rage in its confirmation. Made her cry.

They'd known. All along. It's always been three against one. Not wanting to talk to him is irrational. They all three lied. All three equal in this. But.

Tucker isn’t good for a fight. So she came to Sam first.

Val wants to know the core of this thing. The shape of the truth under a thousand pounds of lies. Wants to know if that shadow in her peripherals that registered as nothing has been the same shadow that stood tall over the school parking lot or the food court or the library with something deadly in her hand in the aftermath of a fight. For years.

Val forces a breath from between her teeth. Says, "No. I'm only talking to you right now, Manson."

"Oh, yeah?" Says Sam and there it is. The fight. It's revving up. Then Sam says, "That so?" In a tone like icechips instead of flint. Rolls for the stop sign across from the Vietnamese corner store. Radio off. Windows closed.

"Yep." Says Val, voice clipped short. She doesn't have words. Not for this. Not really. She wants a fight. "Just you and me."

"Good." Says Sam curtly.

They sit. The turn signal clicks. Sam is the master of bitter silence, but Val's the bitter one, today. Between the two of them there is no such thing as defusion. Between the two of them there is an unmentioned gaping silence. The seconds tick down on it.

Stop sign. "You," Sam pronounces between her perfect teeth, "Attacked Danny." Nothing else. Just that. _You, a ghost hunter, attacked a ghost_. Boo hoo.

"You," Snaps Val, naming the thing more precisely, "Lied to me."

"Oh, I did?"

"All three of you! You know what I goddamn meant!"

"So what if I do? You said it's just me and you right now. So let's talk about that."

Valerie. Does not want to talk. She wants a fucking fight. And from the way Sam's white knuckling the wheel, she does too.

"So you dated a ghost. What's the fucking issue?" Sam sneers. Mocking. She's mocking Val.

"Ghosts don't- " Val starts to snap, clutching her bag so tight her nails ache. Can't get it out. Old words, starting to fester. Is abruptly and completely aware of who she's in a small car with. Where they're going.

"Don't what." Says Sam, sharp and tight. Angry, but only simmering with it. There's a solid purpose wrapped up in her and Val's gonna get it no matter what she has to say. A silver bat covered in spikes. Swung at speed.

All she can say is what she knows. Ghosts are echoes. Copies of copies of imprints on the universe. A ghost is nothing more than a dying scream dragged out into the open. Ghosts don't have emotions. They are emotions. And those emotions are rage and envy and hatred and vengeance and possession.

Ghosts can't love.

"Ghosts can't love," Val grits out. An ultimatum. A truism. A shot in the dark.

"And?" Sam drawls, sounding bored. Mouth turned down in a neat scowl, eyes lidded dangerously. But her voice is even. Calm. Fierce. "You're right. So what about it?"

Val's mouth goes dry. An abruptness freezes her lungs in place. Not an emotion, just the suddenness of it. Of that. Total confirmation. Ghosts don't love. A secondary source, but evidence damning enough for a whole thesis. This just in: ghosts don't love.

"What the fuck, Sam?" Val rasps helplessly, thrown.

"Funny, I thought you'd be happy to hear that. Don't you want to be right?" Red light. Sam's hands on the wheel, steady. Ramrod straight in her seat, tense. It be two years ago and she'd have been chomping at the bit to scream Val down, all angry gestures and violent body language. Too-big boots wobbling on her pedestal. They never used to get along.

Now, Val is only aware of Sam's too-light albino eyes drilling into her soul. The dig of the seat belt into her chest. The weight of her bag. Slightly too hot. Purple. Found wanting. A baseball bat across the back seat. A gift.

 _Disappointment_ _._

Val knew that getting into this car was a test. Hadn't thought she might have been set up to fail.

"It's not about being right. It's. This thing is - this isn't right! He's dead, Sam. He shouldn't be here. He can't- "

"Can't what."

Val thinks of pink eyes. A depth of sadness no living person could survive. A careful isolationism. Lets out a breath. Ghosts cannot love. This is a fact.

She won't say it again.

Sam sighs, all disappointment and met expectations. Hits the turn signal. Well fuck Sam.

Sam doesn't know shit.

"Does Danny make you feel unloved?" Sam drops the words like a fallen gun. Her own ultimatum.

Because fuck, Danny makes her feel like the only person in the _entire world_. Like she's everything to him. Like he has enough love in him to fill three people and then some and is trying to pour it all into her. His eyes glowing and bright and impossibly fond, full of nothing but warmth. Content to watch her doing nothing but pacing or basic maintenance or her hair routine and finding it worthy of witness. His mouth all soft and gently chilled against hers, closed and dry and careful and moaning like she's warming him up.

Like he's made of toxic ectoplasm and would burn her tongue from her mouth if they went any further. His jaw trembling under her fingertips with how bad he wants to do it. Moaning and shaking and whining quietly while Val or Tucker stroke his hair and tease him for getting so easily worked up. Sam pressing in warning against his back any time the barest hint of a purr started to slip into his breath around Val. Cold face getting warmer, pressed against her neck. Hands loose but firm on her sides, her ribs. Holding, never restraining. Lips parting lightly to pant cool breath against her skin. The wanting of something with knives for teeth and venom for flesh.

"Light's green," Val says hoarsely.

They move forward.

"Well? Do you really think he doesn't love you?" Goading. Leading. Obvious answer. It's yes. Yes. He looks at Val like she's the brightest star in the sky with eyes the color of flowing water. And it's a lie. It's a dead thing's idea of love. That's what it was when he caught her hands and made her bangles clink and clatter and smoothed the tension from her fingers. When he waited up for long in the night to tend to her injuries while she snapped exhaustively at him. Just the learned idea of an imitation. Got it from a movie or something. Knows how to look right at her and say all the right things and act the perfect, loving, living, boyfriend.

Danny would be a pro at it by now. He's had two rough drafts to work with on his human impression, after all.

None of that was real.

"Doesn't matter. He's still dead. He's a ghost. It doesn't matter what he thinks he feels. It's not real,"

"That was a yes or no question."

"Then no, no he doesn't." Valerie snarls, the fabric of her bag pulling painfully tight under her fingertips. The shape of the things inside dig into her palms.

"Well bless your heart," Says Sam flatly, pitched to mock. To hurt. Here's the bat. Lined up. "What was it that made you think he doesn't care? Was it - oh, was it how he stood you up all the time? Ran out of dates to go get into fights whenever he felt like it? Was it the lying about having a human moral compass while trying to beat you? Was it how he tailor made weapons to hurt you, specifically? Was it when he spent entire nights chasing you down with a gun? Was it when he lured you out to the country side and left you there? _Or, maybe, was_ _it_ _when he shot you in the face?_ "

Val sits there. Takes it. Can't move.

"Valerie Gray." Sam pronounces, and it's the toll of a bell, the wrap of a spider's web around her throat, a jolt from the electrified spikes on the bat, "Are _you_ capable of love?"

Home run.

The rest of the drive is silent. Sam parks out front. Slams her door. Leaves the hat in the car. The bat, too.

Sam's parents' mansion is absurd. Overdone in modern riche style with all the unnecessary trappings of convenience and luxury that a person could want. All clearly little used. Manicured croquette lawn. Pristine tennis court. Statues. Fountains. White pillars. The generic works.

They go in through the front. The door opens with a fingerprint scanner. Camera above the door. No bell. Val winces through the shield but doesn’t dare mention it.

Inside the house is white on white on white. White noise drifts in around the billowing white curtains. Nearly every window they pass is wide open. The marble floors echo under Sam's boots. It smells like grass clippings.

Sam's parents are in Florida for the week, so evidently that means she has run of the place. She has her own apartment in the city, as far as Val is aware, but this is where the greenhouse is.

The door to it is labeled in brass plating. The door is dark, solid wood. The first thing Val's seen here that's not within the custom ordered design of gold on white on gray on beige. It looks old. Not weathered, but well loved. A real antique, more authentic than the huge white gold vases full of orchids on either side of it. Sam pulls a key from her pocket. A big brass skeleton of a thing. It turns smoothly. The door does not creak.

The greenhouse is enormous. It rises to the third floor of the mansion, sits on a piece of land the size of Val's apartment block. The glass panes shimmer in the sun. It's teeming with plants, more than Val's seen in the forest outside Amity Park. Something chirps. Flutters. Her suit tracks the movement.

"Here," Says Sam gruffly. “We’ll go to the conservation room.”

Val jerks to attention and joins her in the little half open room to the side. An odd cross between a shed and a parlor. Painted, clean, and sporting a set of plush chairs and a small table, but the wall behind them is lined with gardening tools. Presumably. Val doesn't recognize half of them. A real vintage apothecary's chest fills the end wall, each tiny drawer labeled. Full of seeds. Facing the greenhouse is a smooth single pane of glass. The mood is much darker here. Old hardwood. Deep colors. Antiques well kept for use, not display. Utilitarian rather than chic minimalist. The same passive stillness as the rest of the house, but restored rather than mummified. This is Sam's domain.

Sam pulls something like a beekeeper's outfit off the wall and steps into it. It's lavender. Rolls the long half of her hair into a bun and eases a hazmat helmet on.

"Are there bees in here?" Val asks, nonplussed.

"Yeah, but this for the plants." Gloves, boots, mask visor down. Tosses a pair of heavy black garden boots Val's way. "Here."

"...Don't I need all that?"

"No. These plants only hurt ghosts." Val pauses in straightening out the second boot to close her eyes for a few seconds. Is aware of Sam's dead blank stare on her. The steamy heat frizzing up her hair. The implications.

"Great," Val manages to pry from between her teeth. "Where's it at?"

Sam leads them deep into the greenhouse, past a wider variety of plants than Val's seen outside movies. Hidden in a patch of fruit trees is a second, smaller greenhouse shaped like a birdcage. Val takes a breath before entering behind Sam, but inside it's actually cold. The tinted panes of glass turn the streams of sunlight purple. There's an iridescent quality to it. The plants here glow, rustling in a breeze that doesn't exist.

Ghost flowers.

“Okay, give me whatever you have.” Sam says. Her voice bounces and echoes back in a way that it absolutely should not in such a small space. Val’s suit is on alert, scanning the signatures of all the plants, mapping the enclosed area, creating reactive antibody agents against some pollen, filtering a higher level scent out of her lungs. So much new information at once is a little annoying. A headache starts to form behind her eyes. She drops the bag from her shoulder. Hands it off to Sam.

Sam snatches it and pulls everything out on to a long table in the center of the room. There’s equipment here that Val recognizes, but doesn’t think should be in a greenhouse. Distillation station. Beakers in a clear faced sample fridge. An old fashioned centrifuge. An array of FentonTech pieces.

Then again, these sort of plants shouldn’t be in a normal greenhouse, either.

Sam picks up the three vials of the blood blossom vapor.

“This all of it?”

“Yeah.” That’s all the isolated stuff. The original samples she’d worked from. The rest of the junk she’s surrendered to Sam is all the other prototypes and the single other gun that worked at synthesizing it in the field. The last she’d seen of the final product had been in that field under a sea of falling stars. The schematics are rolled up with a hair tie. Val’s not a student anymore; she doesn’t need the bag back. Sam doesn’t offer.

“Good.” She lifts the functional gun from the table and looks it over silently for a moment. Suddenly she turns it down in her grasp, holds it out safely to Valerie. “Wanna do a demonstration for me?”

There is no way that Sam doesn’t know how to shoot a gun. This is some shitty game she’s making Val lose at. Val swallows her anger and takes it.

Sam clomps across the floor. Picks up a pot and sets it on the table. “Here’s your target.” She says, gesturing at the single pink flower with a wave. Val plays along. Sam moves behind her, out of the range of fire. The flower wavers softly. A sunflower with too many petals, all turned backwards, no seeds. All geometrically perfect petals. Val reconnects her suit with the gun and sets it to the lowest power rating, aims for the little flower. Takes the shot.

The pot cracks when it hits the table. Dark blue soil spills like sand, like dry water. The flower turns red and goes still. For all that it suddenly looks so much more normal, it’s a thing wholly unnatural. Red light is anathema to the usual ghost palette. Stillness is not native to spirits. It looks absurdly alive in its sudden stasis. Just like how much easier it had been to see the Danny in Phantom.

Valerie lowers the gun. Point made. “Well?” She asks.

Sam comes up to her elbow, trades her the gun for a pair of hazmat gloves.

“Go touch it.” She commands. Takes the gun away. Val frowns, watches her go. The angry set of her shoulders. The fierce expression on her face. The rough slamming as she goes through a cabinet.

Val approaches the flower. Stares at it silently for a while. Observes. Nothing keeps happening. She gives in and prods a petal. It does not bend. Val smooths her fingers over the solid petals, mesmerized by the utter strangeness of it. There is a slight give to it, more like stiff rubber than thin pieces of ectoplasm. The harsh red of the light is hard to look directly at in the sunlight, in the cool purple of the conservation area. The hit went dead center. Didn’t travel far. The outer petals and all the ones in the back are uninfected.

“Here.” Snaps Sam roughly. She’s standing as far from Val as she can while still able to reach her with a proffered wooden handle. Val takes it. Sam’s glove opens to reveal a chisel. “Get rid of the infected parts.” She instructs.

Val jerks away. The chisel clatters to the table. The blade glows faintly. The flower is red.

“You can’t be serious,” She snaps back, heart pounding uncomfortably. “It - can’t it be nullified with ectoplasm? Or star berries?”

Wordlessly, Sam holds out a test tube. Bright blue ectoplasm. Star berries; aloe vera to the blood blossom’s burn. Val takes it and carefully pours some on a petal. Vapor rises, the blue ectoplasm eating into the red like spreading fire. No - it’s eating away at it. Val watches in silence as the ectoplasm of the plant corrodes. Wilts. Pits with dissolved ectoplasm like rust spots. Her suit informs her of the rate of decay. The loss of mass. The lowering of the plant’s already miniscule power.

Val’s hand shakes as she sets the tube down.

Sam waves something near her face. A tube of green. Regular ectoplasm, no signature.

Val takes it. Pours a tiny drop on another petal. It burns green fire. Sizzles away into nothing. The tube clatters on the table and Val steps back, shaking.

She doesn’t like this game anymore.

“Why -” She tries. Chokes.

“Don’t fucking ask me. You’re the one who made it. Now get the fuck back here and fix it.”

Val stares at Sam, uncomprehending of the scene. The red flower. Frozen. The dirt on the table. The rage in Sam’s eyes. Burning in her own. The chisel. Her own guilt, bright red.

“Why are you making me do this?” She manages to beg. She gets it. Valerie fucking _understands_. Why does she have to be the one to fix this? Why does she have to bear the pain of her own actions? Why does she have to repair everything on her own?

Why does she have to face the wrong she’s done?

“Because Danny wouldn’t let me do it to you.” These words are a bat. An electrified beating. The truth.

When Val can breathe again, she takes up the chisel. Gets to work.

* * *

Half an hour later Val sits in the parlor. Leans over the seat like she’s going to be sick. Sam lounges in the other chair. Protective suit off, boots off. Nurses a glass of water, looking out over the greenhouse that Val just had to face herself in. The ice clatters in the pitcher. A bird tweets. It took half an hour for a plant with a rating of .8 to be completely cleansed of the infection.

“Three hours.” Sam informs her suddenly.

Val raises her head slowly. Sam isn’t looking at her. Out over the garden. Tilts the glass in her hand. Legs spread wide, collapsed in the plush chair. Calm. Rage quelled. Adrenaline fizzled out. Exhausted after the violence. Guess Val got the fight she needed, not the one she wanted. Val’s glass sits on the table untouched. Condensation runs down.

“It’s just ectoplasm. Take out the bad parts, pour on some new. Heals right up.”

“Ghosts can’t feel pain,” Val mutters hoarsely. Reassures herself.

“And?” Says Sam. It’s nothing more than a dull tiredness this time. No challenge about it. No mockery. Val’s paid her due. “Does that make you feel better?”

No. It doesn’t.

“Hm.” Says Sam. “Guess you do care about a ghost.”

Yeah. She does.

Maybe Valerie understands Sam perfectly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, gonna take pity on yall and include a timestamp bc its gonna be true chaos order from here on out. thats the fun part. theres stuff thats not gonna make sense until other parts are up but eh. we'll get there


End file.
